Our Strategies & Work

Since 2015 we have supported the intercultural education Sui Sui Program, which is expert at individual monitoring of indigenous university students and which provides significant research and advocacy work to promote intercultural sensibility in higher education institutions and state scholarship programs.

We are also empowering the indigenous student organization OEPIAP to enhance and fortify the educational opportunities and living conditions for over 100 indigenous students of various ethnic groups living in the city of Iquitos over the longer term.

The Sui Sui Program is a specific program of FORMABIAP, the educational arm of AIDESEP, a national indigenous organization, first set up and supported by “VZW Putumayo”, a Belgian volunteer organization. The program borrows its name from the “Sui Sui” – cheerful, sociable birds that exist in a many colors across Loreto, known to adapt easily to new environments and therefore represent the main goal to promote intercultural worlds.

Current Actions

Financial support and active advice to the Sui Sui’s individual monitoring program of eight university students from the Putumayo and Pastaza river basins in the completion of their academic training. The individual monitoring includes payment of entrance fees, books, basic needs for food and transport, the daily support in study and well being and empowering workshops. The individual monitoring program will continue till end of 2016.

Empowering the indigenous student organization OEPIAP to become a consolidated student association of over 100 indigenous youngsters from over 15 different ethnic groups. This presently includes counseling in relevant meetings with stakeholders, internal workshops, implementation of an office and quiet study room. We help in the search for funding for small projects of the organization.

Providing advice to the Sui Sui Program’s research and lobby on the intercultural sensitivity of the Peruvian state’s scholarship program ‘Beca 18’.

Future Actions

Support the Sui Sui Program’s research that contributes to the improvement of the intercultural sensitivity of universities.

Promote a partnership with the University of the Amazon (UNAP) in order to increase its intercultural sensitivity.

Student exchange program between our indigenous students and the Shipibo students in the Ucayali region, where our sister organization Alianza Arkana is based. Our longer-term objective is to create more permanent intercultural training opportunities for indigenous youth and women. Ultimately, we dream of establishing an intercultural school in the Loreto region.

Seek opportunities to build a real indigenous student campus that facilitates a sustainable intercultural basis for ‘good living’ for the students in the city of Iquitos.